Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Sentimentality Leads to the Gas Chamber

According to the biblical creation account, being
created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human
creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about,
as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is
now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and female he created
them” (Gen1:27) no longer
apply.

No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created
them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves.
Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer
exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and
will.

The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where
our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he
himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who
chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created
state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But
if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither
is the family any longer a reality established by creation.

Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied
hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce,
from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people
have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be
creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker
himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a
creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of
the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied,
human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.

Address
to Roman Curia, December 21,
2012

Reflection – This is a very
tight, careful argument the Pope is making here. It needs to be read carefully
and thought through. Essentially, his point is that many things come together
into a single reality to maintain our human dignity and make it possible.

The modern idea of human
freedom—that it means a rejection of human nature and the capacity to create
oneself virtually ex nihilo—actually destroys human freedom. As Leonard
Cohen says in his song Closing Time, “It looks like freedom but it feels
like death.”

Once human being is not essentially
a gift given, it becomes a commodity. If we are all free to make of ourselves
whatever we will be, if humanity is nothing but a blank slate on which to cast
our ideas and achievements, then the human person as person is something of
little account, little value. It is a very short leap from there to talking of
‘lives not worth living,’ of Ubermensch and Untermensch.

It all seems very fine to speak of freedom
in these terms. It seems kind and tolerant to say that everyone just gets to
make anything whatsoever they want of their lives, and that the essence of
happiness and freedom is to do just that. It is sentimental, but sentimentality
leads to the gas chamber.

When the fundamental reality of the
human person as made in God’s image and likeness, and of God the Creator
fashioning us so, is lost, then the door is not just open to a radical
devaluing of human life. In fact the door is closed and barred fast against any
coherent picture of human dignity and the ineradicable value of the person.

To a large degree Western
Civilization has been living off the capital of its Christian theology for some
centuries now, while largely rejecting that theology. We seem to think that it
is normal and natural for humanity to respect the dignity of persons. But it
takes only a little knowledge of history to know that chattel slavery and child
murder, tribal warfare and destruction of the weak has been the norm of
humanity for most of its history. And it is to that norm we are returning,
quickly, as our capital runs out. Not so much a fiscal cliff as a spiritual and
moral one.

Our humanity is given to us, and
given to us as a gift of being made in God’s image and likeness. Our
male-female identity is at the heart of this ‘givenness’, both because we
experience nowhere more deeply the determined nature of our humanity, and
because it is only in this determined gendered humanity that the capacity to
bring forth new human beings lies.

I said a few days ago, with great Chestertonian
paradox, that freedom is perfected in slavery—only in committing our lives
irrevocably to the other are we truly free. I now say, with equal paradox, that
freedom only arises from slavery. It is only in experiencing our humanity as a
gift we did not choose and cannot change that we enter into and preserve the
dignity and freedom of our own person and that of others.

4 comments:

Lenoard Cohen also said "the truth unsaid, the blessing gone if I forget my Babylon". There is something deep within all of us, a Babylon, that is given to us to discover. We have to discover it within ourselves before we can truly be free. Gender issues / differences are not something that we can overlook in order to become a good catholic, they are something we must work thru in order to become ourselves, to become holy, perhaps become great saints. Truly, that kind of freedom , and love and support in the journey is what we all are seeking? Yes?

I read somewhere...I wish I could rememember now that this verse Romans 2:14 is said to be entrance for natural law theory into Christian thought. "Indeed when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law , they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them".

Yes, sort of a paradox.

Yes, I agree, we can never be fully free until we can give ourselves - to one another . Another paradox- we can only do this by grace.

I absolutely agree with you. I wish I could find time and space to write more of my reflections about all these matters - they take us into very deep waters indeed.I do believe we are male or female, and that it is our bodily structures that determine this... but clearly this is only the beginning of the story, not the end of the discussion. What does it all mean? What of the people who find these questions excruciating or their own gender identity conflicted? Not easy, not simple... much prayer and much love is needed all around here.God bless you.

I loved you for your beauty but that doesn't make a fool of me: you were in it for your beauty too and I loved you for your body there's a voice that sounds like God to me declaring, declaring, declaring that your body's really you

Yeah, talk about your insightful lyrics. Maybe I'm just projecting, but I hear a lot about the failures and evils of sexual libertinism in that song.

Fr. Denis - I read this blog religiously and every single post is quality, both for the Ratzinger source and for your reflections. The length is excellent and the level of intellectual engagement is excellent. Thank you so much.

Yes... I love Leonard Cohen very much. He comes so close, so very close to the truth of things - a real poet.Thanks for the kind words - the blog is a bit of an ongoing miracle, to me at least. Never thought I would find so much to say... yoiks!

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What This Blog is About

This blog was first called 'Life With a German Shepherd,'and was exclusively dedicated to promoting the writings of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. Upon his resignation on February 28, 2013, the name and focus changed, and it was called Ten Thousand Places, broadening out the search for God's face and God's truth to a multitude of writers and artists who have reflected this in various ways.

In January 2015, feeling a need for a new departure in blogging, I re-named the blog 'Getting to the Point', now placing the emphasis on basic catechesis, evangelization, and a constant search for the essential matter of God, man, Church, world, and life. I hope you enjoy it.